Increasing Reliance on Denunciations in Putin's Russia Threatens the State Itself, Utekhin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 17 – Although they do not yet equal the scope they had in Stalin’s times, enunciations are again increasing in number in the Russian Federation; and Ilya Utekhin warns that their appearance and use by the state and the countermeasures that victims of such actions have adopted risk becoming a serious threat to the state itself.

            The anthropologist who earlier taught at St. Petersburg’s European University says that ever more Russians at risk of becoming victims of denunciations have taken preemptive actions to defend themselves by suggesting that those making such charges are guilty of falsification or worse (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/signaly-snizu-v-rossyskie-shkoly-i-universitety-vernulis-donosy).

            That creates problems for officials who rely on denunciations to do their jobs, he says; but even more than that, “the authorities who operate on the basis of denunciations cease to see reality and instead see only a mirror-image of their own fantasies” given that those who make denunciations do what they do to try to prove their loyalty.

            “If the state’s only connection with its citizens is material goods coming from above and denunciations from below, the state begins to operate on the basis of its own picture of the world, something which makes the system ever more inadequate and increases the risk of sharp and even dangerous decisions,” Utekhin says.

            In Stalin’s time, other experts say, “the Soviet organs could use denunciations as sources of information but they couldn’t give the initiative to citizens” by relying on such documents. “This would have been too chaotic.” Now, however, in Putin’s time, the powers that be are more prepared to rely on denunciations, especially when they concern young people and schools.

            And that reflects another change, Utekhin continues. “In the USSR, denunciations were a confirmation of loyalty to the state, but in present-day Russia, they provide support for the myth that society is unified in its patriotic feelings.” As a result, “when the state increases repressions, the number of denunciations always grows.”

            “In many cases,” he points out, “the organs themselves are behind the complaints in order to create the illusion that ‘it is society which demands punishments’ and not the state itself. And if the state supports them, there will always appear people ready to occupy that niche” and engage in denunciations.”

            That leaves the Russian state in a difficult state because “the powers cannot ignore such people as any attempt not to react will lead to new complaints, already about “the criminal inactivity’ of the organs themselves,” a danger that brings with it that the problem of denunciations for society and for the state will only increase.